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Adult barnacles adhere to surfaces by a secretion released on to or forced beneath the bases. This secretion has been called barnacle cement. Carderelli (1968) calculated from crude experiments that the tensile strength of Balanus eburneus exceeded 50,000 p.si., but apart from this work no other data exist on the adhesive properties of barnacle cement. More studies have been undertaken on the biochemical composition of cement (Carderelli, 1968; Saroyan et al., 1970; Cook, 1970), but the results are somewhat contradictory.
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Graham C. Walker (1972) studied this question.
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